BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 3 of 203

About BDEhrman

Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has served as the director of graduate studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies.

Anniversary Post #6 Is Mark’s Seemingly Simple Gospel Unsophisticated?

On the surface, Mark's Gospel seems straightforward and simple, a kind of nuts-and-bolts account of Jesus' life from his baptism to the empty tomb. But is it just that? Here is my Anniversary post #6 celebrating our 14th Blog anniversary, taken from April 2017, where I dealt with this issue in response to a reader's question: ****************************** This post focuses on the literary artistry of the Gospel of Mark – is it a fairly unsophisticated account of Jesus’ life and death? The question itself will require a bit of set-up and explanation. In an earlier post I argued that Mark’s Gospel almost certainly ended in chapter sixteen at verse 8. Jesus has been crucified, dead, and buried. On the third day some women go to his tomb to anoint his body more appropriately for burial, but when they arrive the tomb is already opened, Jesus’ body is not in it, but a young man is, who asks them if they are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He then tells them that he has [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-14T10:34:30-04:00April 16th, 2026|Canonical Gospels|

Anniversary Post #5: Why I Was Reluctant to Write The Triumph of Christianity

My book The Triumph of Christianity was (by far?) the most difficult book I've written for a general audience (difficult to write, not to read). And it was the most learned in many ways, as well as the one I learned most from by writing it, because of the range of informatoin I had to deal with. Here is my Anniversary Post #5, published in 2016, before I was fully committed (that is, under contract) to write it, explaining why I knew it would be unusually hard. ****************************** When my agent Roger and I decided that we might want to explore the possibility of going with a different publisher, the first step was to come up with a book proposal to shop around. For ten years or so I had been wanting to write a particular book, but had always put it off because it had seemed like such a MAJOR undertaking. I came to think that this was the perfect time to pursue it, to propose doing a new book on a completely new [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:49:21-04:00April 15th, 2026|Book Discussions, Spread of Christianity|

Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical
Gallery
Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical

Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus

Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical

If the Gospels are not historical, why should they matter?? Here is my anniversary post from April 2015; in it I expostulate on the importance of the Gospels even if they are not historically accurate, and challenge the idea that history is all that matters. (It's longer than my typical post.) It is taken from the ending of my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne) based on feedback / pushback I was getting from some readers, and explains why "memory" is just as important (more?) as history. ****************************** Like most authors, I get a lot of email from people who have read my books. I find one of the comments I repeatedly receive somewhat puzzling and even disheartening. To explain it, I need to provide a bit of background. When I discuss historical understandings of the New Testament and of the historical Jesus, I frequently refer to the problems of our sources. The Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death by people who were not eyewitnesses and had probably never laid eyes on an eyewitness. [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-14T10:29:15-04:00April 14th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Anniversary Post #3: My Response to an Ill-Tempered Richard Carrier

Here is the third post in my series celebrating our 14th blog anniversary, a post from each of our 14 past years. This is the one I've chosen from April 2014; it's another one that involves a response to a rather spirited attempt to show that I'm an idiot. I tried not to respond TOO much in kind, but, well, I guess it is a bit feisty.... ****************************** Sometimes I think that if I’m “getting it from all sides,” I may be doing something right. The religious conservatives seems to be up in arms about my book How Jesus Became God – both conservative evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics like the Very Reverend Robert Barron. In fact, as I’ve said, I do not think anything in the book is inimical to Christian faith, unless it is completely committed to a view of the infallibility of the Bible and its full, historical accuracy. The Christianity I admire is not like that. But I get it from the non-religious left as well. Yesterday a [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:35:55-04:00April 12th, 2026|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus|

Anniversary Post #2: Why Were the Gospels Written Anonymously?

Here is the second of my "Anniversary Posts" given in celebration of the fourteenth year of the blog. Unlike the snarky first in the series, this one is meant to be strictly informative, on an issue that I regularly get asked about by people who come to realize that the Gospels were not originally circulated in the names we now know them by. But they weren't called something else. They were anonymous. But why? Here was my answer from April 2013, and it's pretty much what I think now in April 2026! ****************************** It is always interesting to ask why an author chose to remain anonymous, never more so than with the Gospels of the New Testament. In some instances an ancient author did not need to name himself because his readers knew perfectly well who he was and did not need to be told. That is almost certainly the case with the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John. These are private letters sent from someone who calls himself “the elder” to a church [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:15:49-04:00April 11th, 2026|Canonical Gospels|

Anniversary Post #1: Defending Misquoting Jesus

Here I begin my 14-post "anniversary" series with the very first post that appeared on the blog (April 3, 2014). Recall: this thread will consist of 14 posts from each of the 14 years of the blogs life, one per year, 13 of them from ... April of that year. (Not this year's, since if you follow the blog, they are still fresh in your mind. This first one is rather telling. Among other things, it tells how much more thin-skinned, snarky, and combative I was in the days of my youth (fourteen years ago!). Hey, go for the jugular! Even so, since it was post #1, it simply has to start the thread. ****************************** Probably more than any of my other books, Misquoting Jesus provoked a loud and extensive critique from scholars – almost exclusively among evangelical Christians, who appear to have thought that if readers were “led astray” by my claims in the book (in many instances, these critics pointed to claims that in fact I never claimed!) they might be [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:10:39-04:00April 9th, 2026|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts|

Celebrating The Blog’s 14th Anniversary! Do You Have a Favorite Post?

Want to help celebrate the beginning of year 15 of the blog? Choose one of your favorite posts (even if you started, say, last week) for us to revisit (see belowe for details) We celebrated our 14th anniversary on April 3 (this year, 2026). Whoa. Never saw that coming. We're gonna keep celebrating for a while. First I should say that this longevity entails some interesting numbers. We have had 4300 posts (most by me; but some by guest scholars and occasionally Platinum members); on average that means about six a week. These posts have generated about 165,710 comments from readers, so around 228 per week; and about 55,000 of those are my replies to questions, so about 75 per week. OK then. More important, we have raised a boatload of money for our charities, nearly $3.5 million since we started; with the last three years being by far the best for our, nearly $1.5 million combined. The vast chunk of that has come from membership fees -- that is, from your generous decision to [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-08T10:06:51-04:00April 8th, 2026|Public Forum|

The Distinctively Jewish Roots of Jesus’ Ethics
Gallery
The Distinctively Jewish Roots of Jesus’ Ethics

Historical Jesus

The Distinctively Jewish Roots of Jesus’ Ethics

One of the points I try to emphasize in my book Love They Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West is that Jesus’ teachings were not made out of whole cloth but are deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible and teachings of other Jewish teachers of his day. Here is one place in my book where I try to stress the point. ****************************** Throughout the prophets of Hebrew Scripture (Isaiah, Amos, etc.) we find a recurring emphasis that God is concerned for the poor, the outcast, the vulnerable – and he expects his people to be actively concerned as well, helping rather than exploiting those in need. Living centuries later and dealing with different situations, Jesus frequently aligned himself with such prophetic teachings. He shared their assumptions about what it means to live as God wants – above all, to care for others and especially those in need, rather than for one’s own life and desires. Jesus was not alone in this; similar views could be found in [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-04T09:06:43-04:00April 7th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Understanding the Gospels, Jesus, and the Spread of Christianity: Great Readers’ Questions

Weren't Jews trying to make converts? Did Christians really do it mainly by telling stories about Jesus through word of mouth? And what did Jesus mean when he was talking about the Son of Man? Here are some of the excellent questions I've been asked by readers recently. QUESTION: Bart, My understanding is that Judaism WAS a proselytizing religion between about 150 BCE and 100 CE., which spread Judaism all around Mediterranean and parts of eastern Europe. I got that understanding from the book Crossing Over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (2010) by Michael F. Bird. Michael Bird is apparently a well-known New Testament scholar in Australia. Are you familiar with him or with that book? What is your rationale for thinking he is incorrect? RESPONSE: Yes, I know Michael. And no, there's no real evidence of Judaism as a proselytizing religion. This was the view that was popular about 50 years ago and still is among some evangelicals today. The passage in Matthew that [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-02T16:24:04-04:00April 5th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Early Christian Reactions to “Heresies” in a Nutshell

In recent posts I gave brief overviews of issues from the earliest centuries of Christianity that would take (and have taken) entire books to cover in adequate length -- Christian relations with Jews and their relationship to hostile outsiders (persecutions). In this post I deal with the third key antagonistic social situation that arose early on in the faith, the relationship of "orthodox" Christians with "heretics." For long-time readers of the blog, this will probably be more familiar territory -- I've dealt with related issues a lot; but whether you have a firm grasp on the matter or no grasp at all, here is a nutshell discussion to provide some of the basics one should probably know. Again, this is from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press). ****************************** Christianity was highly unusual among the religions of the ancient world because it insisted that it mattered what you believed. As we have seen on the blog before, in pagan religions, “beliefs” played very little role at all: what [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-30T10:05:08-04:00April 2nd, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

The First Attempts to Wipe Out Christianity

Persecutions of Christians did not become “empire-wide” or generally threatening until the middle of the third century, over 200 years after Jesus’ death. It is a mistake to think all Christians had to go in hiding in the early years/decades/centuries of the church because they were seen by the Roman state as an impending threat. Here I continue with this short series describing the imperial persecutions of Christians, from my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). ****************************** Valerian (ruled 253-60 CE) Two years after Decius (discussed in the previous post), Valerian assumed the mantle of office. He was the first emperor to issue decrees specifically directed against the Christians and thus the first to sponsor an empire-wide persecution.[1] The initial decree appeared in 257 CE, requiring church leaders to participate in pagan rituals and banning Christians from meeting en mass in cemeteries. More significant was a rescript the next year ordering the execution of all Christian bishops, presbyters, and deacons in the city of Rome itself. Christians at the [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-27T09:39:08-04:00April 1st, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

When Emperors Became More Involved in Christian Persecutions
Gallery
When Emperors Became More Involved in Christian Persecutions

History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum

When Emperors Became More Involved in Christian Persecutions

When did Christianity first become “illegal” in the Roman world? In my previous post I described the Christian persecutions in its early decades, including those under Nero in Rome in 64 CE and Papias in Bythinia in 112 CE. It would be useful to continue the tale, to see just what the known persecutions were about. This is worthwhile information for anyone interested at all in how Christianity started out and was received in the Roman world. There was no “official” persecution (pursued or permitted by a Roman emperor) for another half century. I’ll pick up the story from there, based what I say in my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). This will take two posts, focusing on the emperors’ roles in each case. Part of the point will be that persecution rarely happened, at least at an emperor’s bidding, and Christianity was not declared in all effects illegal until the early fourth century – just a decade before the first emperor actually converted (Constantine, in 312 CE). ******************************* [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-27T11:08:11-04:00March 31st, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

You’re Invited: The Blog Turns 14

I started this blog back in April 2012, and here we still are: fourteen years, thousands of posts later, a few million comments (some of them even on topic!), and over $3 million donated to charity later. I have to say, I never saw this coming. To celebrate, we’re doing something we’ve never done before: a live cocktail hour. No lecture or slides or Q&A. Instead, bring whatever you drink when you’re about to engage in a lively debate (wine? whiskey? sparkling water? coffee? a nice bourbon if you’re feeling Pauline…) and join me on Zoom for an evening of questions that are too fun for a formal course and too academic for normal dinner conversation. We’ll be tackling some of the most pressing hypotheticals in early Christian scholarship, such as: Which biblical figure would make the best Misquoting Jesus podcast guest, and who would be a disaster? Which biblical figure survives a modern 24-hour cable news cycle, and who is completely destroyed by day two? The early church has to survive one family-style holiday [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-30T11:32:02-04:00March 30th, 2026|Public Forum|

Early Persecutions of Christians, in a Nutshell

Why were early Christians persecuted? How extensively? Were they early on seen as a threat to the state? In my previous two posts I discussed the relationship of Jews and Christians -- and how Christians became anti-Jewish -- in the early church. It occurred to me it would be good to talk about two other groups Christians had problems with early on, one from outside their ranks with persecutors (unofficial and official) and one with in their own ranks with "false believers" (heretics). This post will be a snapshot look at persecution in the early centuries. Like the posts on Jews and Christians, this one is taken from an excursus in my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press). ****************************** Many people have a false idea about the early persecutions of Christians—possibly because of too many bad Hollywood movies. Contrary to what is often thought, Christianity was not an illegal religion in the early centuries of its existence, and Christians did not have to go into hiding in [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-27T09:27:56-04:00March 29th, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

The Rise of Christian Anti-Judaism, in a Nutshell

In addition to the question I dealt with in the previous post of how Christians understood their new religion in relationship to Judaism in antiquity, there is another matter of importance for understanding ancient Jewish-Christian relations: what did Christians, broadly speaking, think about their relationship to actual Jews who did not believe? This is a completely different issue and raises the question of how it is that Christianity eventually became an anti-Jewish religion. There can be no doubt that it eventually did so, even if there are debates among scholars about when and how thoroughly that happened. But the history of Christianity after the fourth century can largely be seen, in part at least, as a history of anti-Judaism—which eventually, in modern times, became a history of violent antisemitism. Already by the middle of the second century, as we will see in a moment, there were Christian leaders who were virulently anti-Jewish in their rhetoric. But why was this so? Jesus himself was Jewish, a Jewish teacher with Jewish disciples who learned from [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-23T10:10:28-04:00March 28th, 2026|Jews and Christians in Antiquity|

Early Christian Views of Judaism, In a Nutshell

It is not easy to understand the relationship between Jews and Christians in antiquity; Christianity starts out as a Jewish sect; there is conflict between most Jews and those few who claim Jesus is the messiah; soon more gentiles convert than Jews and many of them are not connected with Judaism or appreciate Judaism; there end up being additional conflicts; and different Christians have different views of Jews and Judaism, at times leading to hateful acts. Etc. I thought it might be useful to provide a broader overview of the situation as a continuation of my “nutshell” discussions of early Christianity, here focused not on a book (New Testament or Apostolic Fathers) but on religious perspectives and social realities on the (ancient) ground. As the fates would have it, I spent some time this afternoon working on the revisions for the 3rd edition of my textbook: The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press) where I have a an Excursus devoted to the topic: “Jews and Christians in the Ancient World.” [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-19T09:39:10-04:00March 26th, 2026|Jews and Christians in Antiquity|

Readers’ Questions on the Accuracy of the Gospels

Among the questions I have received from readers recently have been a couple that deal with a crucial issue connected with both the canonical and apocryphal Gospels. How much of these accounts was simply “made up” – so they are interesting legends, perhaps, but not historical? And what sources of information did the authors have for their accounts? And is there some way to know the authors were reliable investigators and/or that their sources were accurate (think… the Gospel of Luke!) QUESTION (about made-up stories in the Gospels): Do you think some early Christians simply invented such stories, like the boy bitten by an asp and Jesus healing him, or did they evolve over time? For example, someone speculates, “Could Jesus heal when he was just a boy? What if a friend was bitten by an asp?” And they discuss it. And that discussion is shared with others, and over time it is taken as an actual event? If early Christians were willing to invent stories about Jesus, does that tell [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-17T18:32:00-04:00March 25th, 2026|Reader’s Questions|

The Good Done By Christianity to Our World

Was Christianity ultimately good for the world or bad? In the previous post I began to sum up the significance of my study of Jesus’s influence on our modern sense of morality; I ended by talking about how Christianity is often attacked for all the harm it has done, for example in pogroms against Jews leading to the Holocaust, the Crusades and the ongoing hatred of Muslims, the Inquisition – torturing people to death for believing the wrong things. In addition to these major historical events, one also has to consider how it is that many Christians today advocate radical nationalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, the slaughter of civilians, and the burning of the planet—all claiming Christ is on their side. When other Christians say these views and actions are not “Christian,” I readily agree they are not consistent with the teachings of Jesus. But they certainly are “Christian” – done by self-professed followers of Jesus often in his name. I pick up here by looking at the positive side, in one of those [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-27T12:15:02-04:00March 24th, 2026|Public Forum|

The Dark Side of Christianity: How I (Partially) End My New Book

In my previous post I gave a taste of my new book Love They Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West, by giving its Introduction. I now give its Conclusion, which tries to explain why it matters, or should matter, in my view, for understanding the significance of Christianity to our world together, for both those of us who are Christians and those of us who are not. This will take two posts: ****************************** Conclusion Altruism in the Conscience of the West The only time anyone in my family could remember hearing my devout grandfather use foul language was in August 1935, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. The act changed how the country dealt with those who needed assistance by providing federal aid to Americans in need: unemployment and health insurance, retirement benefits for the elderly, financial assistance for widows with children, support for the disabled. The benefits were funded through taxes: those with sufficient means would funnel some of their hard-earned [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-17T18:20:20-04:00March 22nd, 2026|Public Forum|

Advance Preview–How I Begin My New Book: Love Thy Stranger

My book, Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West, is coming out this week (March 24) with Simon & Schuster. You can get it most anywhere you get your books. I have started doing "book events" for it, where I explain it and read a few portions of it for 20-25 minutes or so before taking questions. I decided that the best approach would be to read the beginning and end, while summarizing the far more extensive middle in my own words on the spot. And I thought blog readers would like to see what the beginning and end would look like, in case they're interested in seeing what lies in between in the book itself. This will take three posts. The first is the Introduction to the book (here below). I did publish a similar post a couple of years ago, but I added some bits and edited it for the published version. Here it is: ****************************** Introduction Strange(r) Altruism Most people I know are moved [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-17T10:10:00-04:00March 21st, 2026|Public Forum|

Previous 1 234···203 Next